Big League Dreams (Small Worlds)

by Allen Hoffman

  He supposed that he would have to call up those who had telephones, but even if he could contact them, what if they had made plans that they couldn’t change? This wasn’t Krimsk, where the rebbe’s wish was everyone’s command. He would drive around to a few others after he did the rebbetzin’s shopping, but he wasn’t very hopeful about their praying “as usual” this Sabbath. At least they would eat as usual, but why couldn’t the rebbe go through with the Sabbath as planned? Friday morning! What a time to go changing Sabbath arrangements! And the rebbe had done so at the very last moment when he had suddenly sat down in the corner, collapsing into a near trance. The rebbetzin claimed that the rebbe knew what he was doing. Reb Zelig certainly hoped so.

  Well, one thing Reb Zelig did know: it was getting hotter by the minute, and the longer he waited to unload the automobile, the more difficult it would be.

  Reb Zelig carefully draped his suit coat over the back of a chair to keep it from getting wrinkled and immediately felt a twinge of conscience over what he had done to the rebbe’s lapels. After all these years, that he should do a thing like that! What was happening to him? He had been the calmest man in Krimsk. But why did the rebbe say those things about him? That wasn’t right. And what was this crazy business about the river? But enough of this; he’d better get to work.

  And then Reb Zelig did a very strange thing. He took off his broad-brimmed felt hat. He had worked outside in the street on much hotter days than this without removing his hat. Suddenly feeling both defiant and determined without quite knowing why, he wanted to unload the automobile in his skullcap and side curls. Let the whole world flow by like a river—what did he care? He wasn’t a murderer, was he?

  CHAPTER THREE

  MATTI STERNWEISS LIFTED HIS HEAD OFF THE PILLOW and rubbed his eyes with relief and embarrassment that the tenacious horrors he had just witnessed had been only a nightmare, after all. He let his head fall back onto the pillow, then—lest he doze off into such terrors again—pushed the sweat-soaked sheet off his body with a determined thrust of his stubby, muscular arm and sat up. He stretched his legs over the side of the bed and watched his naked soles contact the cool linoleum floor. As if reassuring himself that he was now on hard, firm ground, he lightly traced small circles with the balls of his feet. A bitter, ugly taste lodged in the bottom of his throat, as if the dream had melted, depositing the choking residue of death. For a moment Matti thought he might throw up, but mastering the impulse, he decided to rinse his mouth. On his way to the bathroom, Matti saw a morning breeze rustle the filmy white curtain and glanced out the window, half expecting to see a flaming shiny metal airplane falling from the sky. To his relief, however, all he saw were the stately, patient sycamores with their shaggy bark and large shady leaves bordering the quiet street.

  The actual crash had occurred over a thousand miles away in Morristown, New Jersey, a place even Matti had never passed through in all his baseball travels, and he had seen more than his fair share of small towns. Several days earlier in New Jersey, at precisely eight in the morning, people on the ground had heard a motor backfiring in the sky and had looked up to see the New York–to–Chicago mail plane flying very low. The all-metal monoplane suddenly tilted forward and, spewing flames, plunged toward the earth.

  At first the onlookers thought the aviators were parachuting to safety from the “blazing meteor” (that was how the newspaper described it). But when they counted three, then four, then five white objects sailing out of the monoplane, they realized that the pilots were saving the mail at the risk of their lives. The plane itself crashed in a tremendous explosion that sent a ball of fire cascading higher than the treetops. When local farmers arrived, they couldn’t even extricate the bodies, which the terrific impact had thrust deep into the mangled mass of metal.

  Just thinking about it was enough to make Matti’s skin crawl. He hurried into the bathroom and stuck his head under the faucet, gargled with cold water, then brushed his teeth—not so much to clean them as to leave a pleasant taste in his mouth, but Matti knew that was only a temporary screen. Underneath, the inescapable, heavy bile sat inside him like a frog that had temporarily dunked its head under water but sooner or later was sure to come up.

  Closing his eyes to dry his face, Matti suddenly remembered the other fire, the one he had kindled in Krimsk as a boy on that fateful Tisha B’Av night that led to the Krimsker Rebbe’s departure for America. He had been in the witch Grannie Zara’s cottage when crazy Faigie Soffer had screamed so loud that the entire neighboring Polish village of Krimichak must have heard her. Refusing his pleas that they leave, she insisted on their destroying Grannie Zara’s beloved cat Zloty. Matti had managed to coax the great cat with the overly large paw into the cupboard along with the other cats and set it ablaze. As the villagers approached, Matti and Faigie had fled into the night. Matti also recalled the strange harmony of the interior of Grannie Zara’s home: everything was in perfect order, measured and precise. The cottage, of course, burned with the cats, and the unsettling harmony was reduced to shapeless ashes. And now, Lieutenant Max Miller’s harmony of flight had been destroyed by the motor’s backfiring, and he had plunged to his fiery death. Matti shook his head at the terrible irony: just like that—a few backfires—and the aviators’ glistening heavenly chariot suddenly became their sealed and charred metal coffin. The hurtling plane had even succeeded in burying itself several feet deep in the ground!

  Matti looked into the mirror; wet strands of hair matted his forehead. Still in his pajamas, he reached for a comb. Instead of arranging his hair, however, he sat on the edge of the tub. Comb in hand, he mulled over the fatal accident once again. Lieutenant Max Miller, the finest mail pilot of them all, had just completed six full years of flying without a serious accident—twice as long as Matti had been a catcher for the St. Louis Browns baseball club, and Matti thought that he had learned everything there was to learn! After six flawless years, what could have gone wrong so suddenly as to have entombed Lieutenant Max Miller in his own plane?

  Matti had never been one to dwell on someone else’s tragedy. Certainly he had never chewed things over and over until they were tasteless. He had always decided what he wanted to do, and then done it. Of course, Matti was aware that some things had changed recently. He had never been in love before. There had been girls, but he had never felt the way he did now about Miss Penny Pinkham, and he had never been on the verge of fixing a baseball game either.

  Matti had never been superstitious—not even back in Krimsk, where superstition had been a way of life. What others considered auguries and omens were just so much nonsense to him. Why shouldn’t they be? He had gone over things carefully—analyzing everything—and had concluded that he should do it. In fact, he had decided that this Friday afternoon’s game against the Detroit Tigers was the one to fix. But now this crazy dream had shaken him. No, he didn’t think he was falling prey to superstition or guilt; he had thought it all through, but he was shaken, and only a fool wouldn’t take that into account. Matti was no fool. Tomorrow there would be another game that would be almost as good as today’s, and by then Matti would be his old self, all mastery and intelligence, a model of concentration.

  His mother called, asking if he was all right. “Fine, Ma, I’m fine. I’ll be out in a minute.” He stood up and combed his hair and then flushed the toilet although he hadn’t used it. Old ladies always listened for such sounds.

  Back in his room he dressed quickly, but as he reached for his wallet, the breeze rustled the curtains again, and he knew that this wasn’t the day to put his plan into action. He couldn’t think about today’s game because the breeze suddenly wafted him back to New Jersey and the farmers who couldn’t remove Max Miller from the all-metal plane. There was nothing for them to do but to pick up the mail.

  Some of the sacks had burst when they hit the ground, and the letters had been scattered across a field. The farmers wandered about, gathered them together, and turned them over to the postal authorities
. The newspaper said that a surprising number of the letters were for people in the Midwest and had been sent all the way from Europe.

  Matti suddenly wondered whether one of them might not be for him, from Krimsk. At that he smiled. Who in the world would write to him from Krimsk? Krimsk was mercifully far, far away; even Matti’s widowed mother didn’t correspond with anyone back in Krimsk. Most of Krimsk had immigrated to St. Louis soon after the rebbe arrived. In St. Louis, however, the Krimsker community had not remained very close. The rebbe would have been the natural magnet to hold the group together, but he was such a prickly individualist that only a handful of older Krimskers bothered to attend his synagogue. Much of the time the rebbe seemed to be more interested in the American Indians than in his own Jewish coreligionists.

  Matti and his mother had not been to his synagogue in years, although Matti supposed that the rebbe still remembered him. Not that Matti attended any synagogue very regularly; on the High Holidays he accompanied his mother to a more American synagogue, and that was all. No, he couldn’t even remember the last time they had been to the Krimsker Rebbe. Occasionally the rebbe’s sexton, Reb Zelig, drove by, and they exchanged a perfunctory nod of acknowledgment. Matti even thought that once he had caught sight of Reb Zelig in the stands at the ballpark, but that was several years ago, and although the man had looked like Reb Zelig, Matti was never sure. After all, why would Reb Zelig watch the St. Louis Browns? Even if he wanted to, Reb Zelig wouldn’t have time; he conducted some sort of used clothing business to support the rebbe’s synagogue. In St. Louis, as in Krimsk, the rebbe’s financial probity was legendary; the Krimsker Rebbe refused to accept donations. And look where it got him in America. Matti imagined that his house of worship must look like an oriental bazaar, with various items of apparel draping the empty seats.

  Thank heavens, baseball had absolutely nothing to do with Europe. Baseball was the American game. Matti felt certain that poor Max Miller must have been a real baseball fan. He was some kind of hero, throwing out the letters like that. Matti was sure that no one in Europe would have done such a thing. The brave young aviator’s death seemed like such an American tragedy. Matti loved America, and as much as he bothered with theological thoughts anymore, he believed that God had blessed America—but apparently not quite enough for Lieutenant Max Miller. That troubled Matti; the talented pilot seemed to have been so deserving of success.

  Matti was also sure that in Krimsk they had never even seen an airplane. Why did they need one? Who gave a damn about Krimsk anyhow? He had better start concentrating on catching today’s game, or the St. Louis Browns would lose it honestly to Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers without Matti’s making a cent.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AFTER HIS SEXTON HAD LEFT, YAAKOV MOSHE FINEBAUM, the Krimsker Rebbe, returned to his seat in the corner and concentrated, but he could not recapture the image that had stunned him so suddenly: the Mississippi River as he had seen it on his arrival seventeen years earlier, flowing red with blood.

  He turned to look out the window into the yard and saw the ripening apples pulling the pliant branches toward the earth. The grass was full after the summer’s growth, and the tall, spindly weeds poked higher than the fence bordering the alley. He opened the window, and the full, rich morning heat of late summer carried the aroma of growth coming to fruition. The Krimsker Rebbe felt welling within himself the stimulation and fear of awesome expectancy. This was definitely not the Sabbath on which to leave town.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AT NINE O’CLOCK BORUCH LEVI RUDMAN PULLED UP in his new Hupmobile in front of “his” synagogue, that is, the one he had purchased for Rabbi Max. Since his return several weeks ago from Krimsk, he had been attending the seven o’clock morning service. This morning, however, he had slept late, a very unusual occurrence, which made Boruch Levi very uncomfortable.

  By this hour he should already have been down on the levee at his enormously successful junkyard and rag shop. After all, he had been away for most of the summer, and he had some catching up to do, but he wanted to consult privately with Rabbi Max about Isidore Weinbach’s memorial tea party this coming Sunday afternoon, honoring Wein-bach’s father on the anniversary of his death.

  The idea of a memorial party in a formal rose garden with tea in china cups—with saucers yet—and sandwiches trimmed of their crusts was absurd, and Boruch Levi was as embarrassed as anyone else to be involved in such a ridiculous perversion of tradition. At authentic memorial repasts, at Shabbos kiddush immediately following the morning service or at the “Third Meal,” eaten between the Sabbath afternoon prayers and the Saturday night service, Jews sucked salty herring off the rigid, symmetrical bones and drank strong whiskey from short, thick glasses as had their fathers and grandfathers before them for generations. But Isidore, formerly Yitzhak Weinbach of Krimsk, no longer entered a synagogue, and worse, he and his wife had adopted a complete tradition of rose gardens, an aesthetic that excluded herring and whiskey. Since they no longer observed the traditional dietary laws, they could not serve the kosher Jews of Krimsk anything more substantial. Sometimes Boruch Levi wondered why the real estate mogul even bothered with the silly event, but he supposed that a father was a father and memory remained memory even with the weak crust trimmed from tasteless goyish white bread.

  Ever since Boruch Levi’s recent triumphal summer visit to Krimsk, the American brand of remembrance seemed all the more embarrassing, even a mockery of the parent it was intended to honor, but ever-loyal Boruch Levi—even more so after Krimsk—willingly organized the annual event and would continue to do so as long as Isidore Weinbach could resist his wife’s impulse to grace the rose garden with those truly trayf abominations that sat upon the great oak table of her dining room.

  Although he had long ago paid back the money he had borrowed, Boruch Levi felt himself indebted to Isidore Weinbach. The debt went beyond mere money back to that final astounding Tisha B’Av in Krimsk. On their way into Krimsk to commit mayhem, the riotous peasant mob had torched the large unused synagogue known as the Angel of Death. As if possessed, the Krimsker Rebbe had dashed into the flaming inferno to save the holy Torah and moments later had emerged spinning like a top with a fiery figure who clutched the sacred scroll to his chest as if it were a child. Believing the smoldering figure to be the devil himself, the Polish peasants fled back to their neighboring town of Krimichak. The “devil” turned out to be a young itinerant student radical, agitating against the Russian tsar, and the rebbe had rewarded him on the spot with his own daughter’s hand in marriage. The rebbe had also announced that Reb Zelig, the Angel of Death’s custodian, was to become his personal sexton, and—most amazing of all—he was to accompany the rebbe and the surviving Torah scroll to America!

  Within weeks, the Krimsker Rebbe had realized every one of these goals. Marrying his daughter to a perfect stranger was even more astonishing because she had been betrothed to Yitzhak Weinbach, even then a great financial success as a match manufacturer. Yitzhak had protested, but to no avail; it was as if the rebbe had been possessed on that fateful day. If Yitzhak had felt betrayed in love, Boruch Levi had felt betrayed in guidance: the previous night, when Boruch Levi had sought permission to emigrate to America, the rebbe had been horrified at the suggestion and had explained to Boruch Levi that “even the stones in America are trayf.” Boruch Levi, having lost all faith, had sought help in emigrating from the rebbe’s other victim, Yitzhak Weinbach. Yitzhak accompanied Boruch Levi to America, aiding him generously and continuing to serve as his financial patron in his first St. Louis years. Even after Weinbach launched his own spectacular career, he remained in touch with Boruch Levi and never made him feel that he was the slightest imposition.

  Boruch Levi had never forgotten that help, and he, too, along with the rest of the Krimsk community, took pride in Isidore’s staggering commercial success. Although Weinbach had arrived in America with a tidy sum, within ten years he had become a millionaire. How else could he have become presi
dent of a bank?

  Almost all of those leaving Krimsk had gravitated to St. Louis, because that was where the earlier arrivals had settled. They were from such a small town that New York had seemed too big; somehow they had managed to filter through to the Midwest. Until recently Boruch Levi had thought there was something almost magical about his New World home, St. Louis. Founded in a great bend on the western side of the Mississippi River, the city had extended to the West like a great seashell or fan, whose parallel structural lines led directly to the generative source of the river. All of the city’s great thoroughfares came together downtown by the river because that is where they started. The city’s geography enabled a man to see where he had come from and where he was headed.

  Boruch Levi, along with many others from Krimsk, had personified the progressive urban development. His junk shop was still on the levee by the river, but now he lived in the city’s West End in a graceful neighborhood between Delmar Boulevard and the open expanse of Forest Park. Each day as he drove through the city, he enjoyed every moment of the lengthy commute, for he felt it demonstrated the linear magnitude of his success. Downtown he would detour from his direct line to drive by Yitzhak Weinbach’s bank. Ever loyal, Boruch Levi wanted to assure himself that everything was all right at his friend’s bank. And now, as an act of allegiance, Boruch Levi was on his way to arrange for Yitzhak Weinbach’s memorial garden party, where kaddish would be said for Yitzhak’s late father, may he rest in peace.